HOLLYWOOD -- Two days after Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby outlined a grim future for college athletics, his Pac-12 counterpart painted a very different picture.

"While we've heard some doomsday and some threats over the last week, I am very confident and optimistic about where college sports is going," Pac-12 commission Larry Scott said Wednesday during the league's football media day at Paramount Studios.

Scott touted the presidents and chancellors of the Pac-12 for advancing an agenda intended to "bring college sports into the modern era." He said he embraces proposed reforms that include promoting student-athlete health and welfare, integrating them more broadly into campus life and providing them greater financial support."

Bowlsby, the former Stanford athletic director, warned that the NCAA's enforcement staff is toothless to halt cheating and that "a strange environment" featuring lawsuits by former athletes threatens college sports.

He argued against unionization of college athletics and said paying athletes could spell the end of many Olympic-sport programs.

Scott doesn't envision such a bleak horizon.

"We know there are some significant challenges out there, and we know it's time to make significant changes," he said. "Today requires that we do more for student-athletes who work so hard to find balance for their passions for their sport while still wanting to get an education."

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Scott urged the media not to "oversimplify" the question of whether student-athletes should be regarded as employees. He suggested that only two percent of Pac-12 football players are drafted each year and that only three percent of basketball players have careers in the NBA.

"We need to make necessary reforms, and we will," he said. "But radically changing the model into a professional model or trying to reinvent the construct where student-athletes are treated as employees would threaten the existence of many women's sports (and) Olympic sports."